George MacDonald > Quotes

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.”
― George MacDonald

“I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.”
― George MacDonald

“Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.”
― George Mac Donald, Wilfrid Cumbermede

“Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly.”
― George MacDonald

“Her heart - like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away - was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved everything she saw. ”
― George MacDonald, The Day Boy and the Night Girl

“Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

“To try to be brave is to be brave.”
― George MacDonald

“It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over over any soul be loved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. ”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.'
What is that, grandmother?'
To understand other people.'
Yes, grandmother. I must be fair - for if I'm not fair to other people, I'm not worth being understood myself. I see.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

“Doing the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.”
― George MacDonald

“Philosophy is really homesickness.”
― George MacDonald

“Come, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy. ”
― George MacDonald

“No story ever really ends, and I think I know why. ”
― George MacDonald

“People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

“I write, not for children,but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.”
― George MacDonald

“You must learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you will always be only half brave.”
― George MacDonald, The Day Boy and the Night Girl

“There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“All that is not God is death.”
― George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III

“Past tears are present strength.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.”
― George MacDonald

“Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

“When I can no more stir my soul to move, and life is but the ashes of a fire; when I can but remember that my heart once used to live and love, long and aspire- O, be thou then the first, the one thou art; be thou the calling, before all answering love, and in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.”
― George MacDonald, The Diary of an Old Soul

“The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is — not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.”
― George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts

“The world...is full of resurrections... Every night that folds us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early, and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it - the day rises out of the night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life.”
― George MacDonald, The Seaboard Parish

“If we will but let our God and Father work His will with us, there can be no limit to His enlargement of our existence”
― George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III

“As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book.”
― George MacDonald, The Marquis of Lossie

“A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

“Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.”
― George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind